Tropical Cyclone Chapala intensified rapidly on Friday and it became the equivalent of a Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale.\u00a0 At 5:00 p.m. EDT on Friday the center of Tropical Cyclone Chapala was located at latitude 13.9\u00b0N and longitude 59.9\u00b0E which put it about 405 miles (655 km) east-southeast of Salalah, Oman.\u00a0 Chapala was moving toward the west-southwest at 5 m.p.h. (8km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 150 m.p.h. (240 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 185 m.p.h. (295 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 932 mb.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Chapala is a very well organized tropical cyclone.\u00a0 It has a well defined eye and a strong core of thunderstorms around the eye.\u00a0 Those storms generated upper level divergence which pumped out mass and allowed the surface pressure to fall rapidly.<\/p>\n
Chapala is an environment favorable for tropical cyclones.\u00a0 It is over warm Sea Surface Temperatures and the upper level winds are light.\u00a0 So, there is little vertical wind shear.\u00a0 However, a secondary eyewall may be developing and eyewall replacement cycles could cause fluctuations in intensity for the next day or two.\u00a0 When Chapala approaches the Arabian peninsula, it will start to pull in very dry air, and that will weaken the tropical cyclone even before it makes landfall.<\/p>\n
A subtropical ridge is steering Chapala toward the west and that general steering motion is expected to continue for another 36 to 48 hours.\u00a0 As Chapala reaches the western end of the ridge, it could turn more toward the northwest.\u00a0 Tropical Cyclone Chapala could be approaching the coast of Yemen in 48 to 60 hours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tropical Cyclone Chapala intensified rapidly on Friday and it became the equivalent of a Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale.\u00a0 At 5:00 p.m. EDT on Friday the center of Tropical Cyclone Chapala was located at latitude 13.9\u00b0N and longitude 59.9\u00b0E which put it about 405 miles (655 km) east-southeast of Salalah, Oman.\u00a0 Chapala was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,2],"tags":[258,57,259,54,260,256,257,255],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1853"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1853"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1854,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1853\/revisions\/1854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}